I have been recently reminded of my ability to become addicted to things. Particularly puzzles, or speed games. When I was a kid I loved doing puzzles. I'm talking when I was like 5 I used to do 500, 1000, 2000 piece puzzles. I had this little table that I used to do them on aptly named "my puzzle table". I would love working on my puzzles. Obsesivly I would try and complete the puzzles in record times. As soon as I had a new puzzle out the pieces came and I would begin. Always with the edges first and then the tedius task of filling in the missing pieces. Sleeping and eating were mearly unwanted interuptions between me and my task. I knew I was being watched by the government secretly or by higher inteligence and it was my incredible puzzle skills that would one day save the planet from immanent destruction. So I worked at it feverishly. I was anal, I could tell if someone else had put in a piece while I wasn't around and would pick it out and confront them on their ERROR! Irate at the audacity of them trying to take away from my glory of finishing the puzzle all by myself!!! In my incredible selfishness I barked at anyone who distracted me and, went to bed many a night with overlly weary eyes. But it was worth it I loved the feeling of accomplishment when that last piece went in and my mission was over and I could return to normal life again.

When I got older this obsessive compulsive dissorder moved towards video games. First with the intelivision that I had and then later onto the gameboy. I would play for hours trying to finish a game just one more try...one more try I can do it this time. I remember tetris on my gameboy ohhh how many waisted hours I spent trying to acomplish a better score, for what that little dazzling music at the end with the rocket ships that would blast off into space...getting bigger and bigger the higher your score was above 100,000 pts.

The other day say a couple weeks ago Shelley was playing mindsweeper on my computer and was demonstraiting extraordinary skills at this monotinous game. Her command of the mouse was somewhat mesmorizing...what was that? that I had just witnessed a two button manouver? Ahhh and then it began I had to try it...I had to win...Shelley promptly got the high score on my machine and this started a two week long obsession with this game of which I began perfecting my own manouvers. I'm imbarissed to count how many hours I have just lost playing this game in the past two weeks only to get a lower time, to see if I could, if I had the ability to command my brain and fingers to work together in sink to beat her score. Well tonight I did, perhaps now I can return to normal life and put to rest my OCD once again until another puzzle is brought out.